Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
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For the last six months I've really tried hard to get out of it, but tomorrow morning I am due bright and early for jury duty. I haven't mentioned it here because I have been in denial about it until the last minute.
I know I may not be selected, and it may be over in one day's trip to the court house. I just don't like being in places like that. I love the US judicial system and don't fear US police.
Trigger Warning
But I was raised in Uruguay when there was a dictatorship there, and courts and police were cruel and corrupt. I was arrested for no reason 3 times, and ended up getting tortured to the edge of death the third time. The officer presiding over my interrogation actually did have me kneel to shoot me in front of my teen friends. He then pulled his side arm, put it to my temple, and pulled the trigger. It jammed. He pulled it again. Miraculously, it jammed again. He made a wisecrack to his troops, and they laughed uproariously. In both fear and relief at being alive I wet myself in front of him, his troops, and all of my teen friends.
It's both a terrifying and a humiliating memory. Along with it comes the memory of the mother of my best friend in high school. When we were in 10th grade, she was arrested under the dictatorship's rules. We spent 3 years going to visit her in prison every week. She was kept in a filthy cell deep underground behind stone walls, it was like those dungeon scenes in movies, it was just horrible. It tore him to pieces every week, but we went. It was his mom.
And on and on for 12 years, my youth. Like I said, I live here because I ran away from that in Uruguay. I love the US court system and find the police to be nice compared to that. Uruguay's a democracy, too, now, and the police are nice to me there, too, when I got back and visit. All of that is gone, but it's still in me in my PTSD DNA, so to speak.
So I'm just not really as eager to go to the courthouse as other people might me, even for jury duty.
I know I may not be selected, and it may be over in one day's trip to the court house. I just don't like being in places like that. I love the US judicial system and don't fear US police.
Trigger Warning
But I was raised in Uruguay when there was a dictatorship there, and courts and police were cruel and corrupt. I was arrested for no reason 3 times, and ended up getting tortured to the edge of death the third time. The officer presiding over my interrogation actually did have me kneel to shoot me in front of my teen friends. He then pulled his side arm, put it to my temple, and pulled the trigger. It jammed. He pulled it again. Miraculously, it jammed again. He made a wisecrack to his troops, and they laughed uproariously. In both fear and relief at being alive I wet myself in front of him, his troops, and all of my teen friends.
It's both a terrifying and a humiliating memory. Along with it comes the memory of the mother of my best friend in high school. When we were in 10th grade, she was arrested under the dictatorship's rules. We spent 3 years going to visit her in prison every week. She was kept in a filthy cell deep underground behind stone walls, it was like those dungeon scenes in movies, it was just horrible. It tore him to pieces every week, but we went. It was his mom.
And on and on for 12 years, my youth. Like I said, I live here because I ran away from that in Uruguay. I love the US court system and find the police to be nice compared to that. Uruguay's a democracy, too, now, and the police are nice to me there, too, when I got back and visit. All of that is gone, but it's still in me in my PTSD DNA, so to speak.
So I'm just not really as eager to go to the courthouse as other people might me, even for jury duty.
Besides the damage that the stress could do to your already over-taxed physical symptoms.
Gertie want's so much to give you off handed responses that would scare them.
...Like billing them for your medical during this month instead of insurance, since they are responsible for the stress induced complications of your health.
....Telling them you are wanting to write another book, on judicial failure systems. Of course you will change the names, but the income will be great. Jury duty and professor salary need to be augmented.
...Ask them if you can wear a monk's bardocucullus for comfort and relief of constraints while sitting. You diabetic neuropathy and CKD, won't flare so much that way. Better yet naked or a body stocking?
Hugs and support,
Jewells
In the future, I'd put it out there that it's the WAITING that's worse than the reality of it...
I dodged three jury duties. One was one that fell through. The other two, I just happened to be breastfeeding. But I suppose you couldn't have used THAT one, huh...
Hugs.
Hope that was the end of it for you Muji. No doubt as stro g as you are you would have made it through any trial with flyi g colors. You have already been through so much that this would seem like a piece of cake in comparison.
However, PTSD does still carry a stigma in the public at large, and tenure committees will meet level by level all year chewing over my file. I got tenure once before at another college in 1997, so I'm not too worried. Still, I know how insider office politics can spin the facts in someone's personnel file.
One of our categories for tenure is "service to the community." I have done "service to the community" speaking once a month for 3 years now at 2 local churches, speaking about PTSD and recovery. I'm doing it again this Sunday. So I don't want to be seen at the last minute as unable to serve on a jury in town, even though I deserve to be excused.
That's why I'm seeing if I can get through this without an official PTSD excuse written down on my record, playing the odds that I won't even get called after all. We'll see: the next trial in town in scheduled for June 9. Fingers crossed.